'Haunted' house looks more like a family reunion

Updated 10:40 pm, Sunday, October 30, 2011

Photo: Nick De La Torre

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James Sangster, left, a paranormal investigator with Houston Ghost Research, stands with Tony Barton, who also is an investigator and the group's medium. A couple who say their house is haunted sought help from Houston Ghost Research.

James Sangster, left, a paranormal investigator with Houston Ghost Research, stands with Tony Barton, who also is an investigator and the group's medium. A couple who say their house is haunted sought help from

First came a relative, then the relative's friend, then relatives of relatives who lived with the couple. Soon, the trim, three-bedroom house at the end of a Pearland cul-de-sac was packed and life was a nonstop romp.

The real problem with these kinfolk, though, was that they were all dead. Tony Barton, 43-year-old ex-military man, salesman, and connoisseur of craft beer, was haunted.

It's the type of tale - filled with woooos, boos and goosebump-popping fright - that you'd expect to hear around Halloween, which, of course, is Monday. The Bartons say their woes started in the sunny days of summer.

"Nothing big happened right away. It was little accumulations," Barton says. "The wife and I both disregarded them - maybe hearing something, shadow movements, feelings of being watched. ... Only when things really escalated did we look at each other and say, 'Something's going on here.' "

That's when the Bartons, searching the Internet for help, discovered Houston Ghost Research, a paranormal research group headed by Pasadena information technologist James Sangster.

Members regard themselves as crisis intervention specialists. To them, the question isn't whether ghosts exist, it's when and how to deal with them. They prefer mediums to high-tech gadgetry in grappling with the unseen. Working without charge, their ghost-busting tools involve prayer, incense and sheer strength of will.

When the Bartons moved into their new home in August 2007, both possessed a curiosity about the paranormal. Barton grew up in a house "where things moved around, dresser handles rattled."

Haunted housework

His conservative family rarely acknowledged the events. "I brought it up a couple of times and was told a great-grandmother had 'gifts,' " Barton says.

The wildest part of Barton's tale - he swears every word is true - began with an exercise in dreary housework.

With his wife at work, Barton decided to scrub the master bathroom. After neatly organizing the items on the bathroom counter, he went to the laundry room to retrieve cleaning supplies. When he returned minutes later, a can of hair spray left in a basket at vanity's edge, conspicuously sat at the counter's center.

While mowing the grass the next day, Barton glanced at his house to see a little girl with shoulder-length blonde hair watching him from a window.

"It was a quick flash. Hey, you're not supposed to be there! I looked again and she was gone," Barton says. When the couple talked, Barton's wife confessed she had been having creepy dreams and sensations.

A day later, Barton was navigating rush-hour traffic on Loop 610, eyes on the radio dial, when, he says, something kneed him hard in the back. The blow, he says, redirected his attention to the road just in time to see the car in front of him suddenly brake. The incident, he believes, may have averted a crash.

Ghost Research mediums responding to Barton's summons quickly attributed the phenomena to a dead male relative who had come to visit, bringing with him the girl. Furthermore, about half a dozen other spirits - perhaps rung up by a previous resident's Ouija board experiments - were hanging out in an upstairs bedroom. Barton and his wife initially decided to leave the ghosts alone.

More unwanted guests

When Kim Barton's parents came to live with the couple, however, events intensified. The elder man's dead father and sister regularly dropped in to visit. A jovial cousin known as "Uncle" popped out of walls to say "howdy," Barton says. Curtains rustled. Doors rattled. Shadows danced in the hall.

After conferring with Sangster, the couple decided the time was right for a house cleansing.

Smoldering incense in hand, the Bartons mincingly stepped through the house invoking the spirit of St. Michael. The atmosphere was heavy was malice.